With the MTA moving forward with plans to implement congestion pricing, which would be tolls for drivers coming into Manhattan below 60th Street, more and more cab and ride-hailing drivers are worried about how it will impact their income.
“Congestion pricing, it’s going to be more money from our pocket,” said taxi driver Jose Valderrama. “I really believe that they shouldn’t do it. For yellow cabs or even Uber. We are coming to work, not coming to ride.”
He bid up the price of medallions and borrowed against them. When their value plummeted, immigrant cabbies were left deep in debt.
Gene Freidman, a cabdriver’s son who schemed his way to become the nation’s biggest taxi mogul and came to personify both the inflated ascent of the industry in New York City and its crushing financial collapse, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 50.
His death, in a Manhattan hospital, apparently from complications of a heart attack, was confirmed by the Riverside Memorial Chapel funeral home.
In 2006, when Richard Chow bought his taxi medallion from the city for $410,000, it seemed like a great idea. The value of medallions was rising steadily, and the Taxi and Limousine Commission was touting them as good long-term investments, so he took out a $358,200 loan. Then came the disruption — Uber, Lyft — and a collapse in the market in 2014. Chow, like thousands of other predominantly immigrant drivers, was left with a medallion he could only resell for perhaps a quarter of its former value, $389,000 in debt, and no hope of retiring.
Restrictions are lifting, and so, too, are taxi and e-hail app trips.
That’s more passengers for yellow taxi driver Md Azad.
“Before, we make $100, $200. Now, we can make more than $200 every day. That means, it’s good business and so busy,” Azad said.
The Tesla Model 3 is the first electric vehicle approved as a yellow cab in New York City, and the first one has hit the road.
In October 2019, Electrek was first to report that the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), which oversees the city’s fleet of yellow cabs, has approved the Tesla Model 3 as the first electric vehicle to be eligible to become a yellow cab in New York City.